Fishing (East End); John Roberts for SCOTUS?

For the benefit of the fishheads who come here, I'll skip right to the rest of my UP fishing adventures.

Last Thursday, we checked out of the Two Rivers and headed to Grand Marais to hang out by Lake Superior a bit and hike on nearby segments of the North Country Trail. I also wanted to fish a nearby river that's been stuck in my memory after one fine evening there in 1992.

The fishing that night was decent--got a few, missed a few--but I thought the stream had potential that was worth exploring further. I also thought I might have seen a cougar that night. At one point in the evening, a cacaphony of birdcalls sounded in the distance, and slowly grew louder and louder. Soon, I saw dozens of birds wheeling about overhead, a feathered cyclone sweeping toward the sunset. Then I heard a series of short, sharp grunts, something that sounded like a cross between hiss and a growl. These sounds also grew louder, and soon I could see a long, tawny mass behind the alders on the stream's east bank. It stopped there, though the growling/hissing sounds continued.

I didn't know what to do. I was a little scared, I'll admit. But I also wanted to get a good look at the thing. I stood in the river silently for a while, but the creature didn't move. Lacking better ideas, I tried to imitate its grunt in hopes of getting it to poke its head out in curiosity. The beast wasn't buying. Whatever it was let out a long howling scream and crashed off through the brush away from me.

At the time, I told myself it couldn't have been a cougar, since all authorities concurred that the cats no longer lived in Michigan. But since then some pretty strong evidence has emerged for their continuing presence here, and I have more confidence that what I saw--or at least heard--was a cougar.

My recent return there, last Friday, was less dramatic in all ways. To make a fairly short story even shorter, I fished nymphs, dries, and streamers and got one brief hookup for my efforts, a brookie that threw my Wooly Bugger on its second jump. The river was very low and clear. I did see good numbers of caddis flying, but unlike at the Ontanogon, that did not foreshadow a caddis feeding frenzy by the trout. No big cats, though a swimming beaver did pass about a foot from my left leg. Around 8:00 I decided to leave off the fishing to pick some blueberries--two bushes back at the access point were loaded with more than I'd seen on the trip to date. They were delicious on our cereal back at the motel, and I considered the morning well spent.

Note to Senate Democrats, re the nomination of John Roberts to the SCOTUS: Give him a thorough grilling and get his views and habits of reasoning into plain view as far as possible. Express grave reservations if you must (and there's probably plenty of reasons to), but don't waste your energy and your tenuous credibility stonewalling the nomination. Bush is never going to give you someone you like, and if you're going to make a big noise, I'd prefer you do it about a matter of more than passing and abstract interest to most Americans.